Throughout the many years that bicycle seats have been employed, numerous variations and developmental improvements have evolved in a continuing effort to improve the comfort of the bicycle seat and its ability to support the rider, as well as provide resilient flexibility as the rider shifts his weight from one side to the other. Although various alternative materials have been employed in an attempt to attain a bicycle seat supporting undercarriage which would attain the ideal goals many innovative developments have employed pre-formed wire in the bicycle seat undercarriage. The following list of patents provides a representative sample of prior art developments that have been produced employing pre-formed wire undercarriage constructions:
Downes--U.S. Pat. No. 591,330, issued Oct. 5, 1897 PA1 Naber--U.S. Pat. No. 679,537, issued July 30, 1901 PA1 Mesinger--U.S. Pat. No. 2,149,247, issued Feb. 28, 1939 PA1 Young--U.S. Pat. No. 3,844,611, issued Oct. 29, 1974 PA1 Mesinger--U.S. Pat. No. 3,884,525, issued May 20, 1975
As clearly represented by these U.S. Patents, preformed wires have been employed principally as spring members in order to provide the support and resilient flexibility required by a bicycle seat. As clearly shown in both Downes and Young, the desirability of comfortably supporting the ischial bones of the rider independently has been a sought after goal from 1897 through to the present.
However, prior art bicycle seats have been unable to provide the required independent resilient flexibility inherent in a comfortably acceptable bicycle seat at a reasonable cost. One of the principle factors in this prior art failure has been the consistent use of pre-formed wire in undercarriages as coil springs, in order to support the rider's weight. As a result, large quantities of wire were required along with interconnecting hardware to assure cooperative interplay of the various coils. This caused these support systems to be both heavy and expensive to manufacture.
Another major difficulty with prior art wire undercarriages is the substantially universal construction of the wire undercarriages in an unloaded configuration which is substantially identical to the ideal loaded configuration. As a result, any weight placed on the seat by the rider changes the seat from its ideal supporting configuration to a loaded configuration which is not ideal.
Therefore, it is the principle object of the present invention to provide a bicycle seat having a pre-formed wire undercarriage which is inexpensive to manufacture and provides a comfortable support system for a rider.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a bicycle seat undercarriage having the characteristic features described above which departs from the prior art teachings for use of pre-formed wire and employs the torsional physical characteristics of the wire instead of the typically used helical compression spring characteristics.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a bicycle seat undercarriage having the characteristic features described above which also provides a dual, independent resilient deflection in the seat support portions, maximizing rider comfort and supportive movement of the seat in response to the movement of the rider.
Another object of the present invention is to further incorporate two independent seat support portions which are moved into an ideal supporting configuration when loaded.
Other and more specific objects will in part be obvious and will in part appear hereinafter.